


Kiev

by Larilyn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Flashbacks, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-28 02:35:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18202346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larilyn/pseuds/Larilyn
Summary: What Bucky said to Natasha in Wakanda, and what that meant to Steve.





	Kiev

 

“How you been, Buck?”

 

“Not bad. For the end of the world.”

 

Bucky turned to Natasha and gave her an appraising look. A lesser woman would have blushed. “Blonde?” he scrunched his nose. “Not a fan.”

 

“Well... “ Nat shrugged. “I had to go to ground and the red is too memorable.”

 

“You were brunette, in Kiev.”

 

Natasha's mouth fell open in surprise. “You remember?”

 

Bucky's gaze softened and the faintest of smiles crossed his face. “I remember.”

 

Steve looked back and forth between them. “Wait, Kiev? What happened in Kiev?”

 

“We'll tell you later, Steve. After.”

 

“Yeah, Punk. We've got work to do.”

 

 

Now

 

The bed was cold.

 

Natasha reached over to Steve's side of the bed, only to find it empty.

 

It wasn't surprising.

 

She knew where she could find him.

 

Steve was staring out their picture window, high in the tower of their living quarters in Wakanda. From their window, they could see the woods where their friends had dissolved out of existence. Natasha had thought about asking the Queen Mother to move them to the other side of the building but decided that she didn't want to be an additional burden.

 

She was regretting that decision now.

 

“Steve, come back to bed.”

 

“Can't sleep,” he mumbled. “I didn't wake you, did I?”

 

“No. You didn't.” Natasha didn't know what else to say. So she just wrapped her arms around him from behind and pressed her face against the warm skin of his shoulder. “Come back to bed, Steve.”

 

“They're gone, Nat. They're just,” he let out a heaving sigh, “gone.”

 

“I know,” Natasha's response was barely more than a whisper.

 

“Bucky looked... he looked so much better and now...” Steve's eyebrows knitted together, she could see it in the reflection of the picture window.

 

They stood there, in silence for several minutes before Steve said, “You said something about Kiev...”

 

“I don't know if now is the time, Steve.”

 

“I want to hear it.” He turned in her arms and pressed his forehead against hers. “Tell me what happened, Nat.”

 

“You come back to bed. And I'll tell you about Kiev.”

 

Then

 

“I don't like the hair color, Nat.” Clint Barton's voice came in over her earpiece.

 

She responded back, using the glass of champagne to cover the movement of her lips. “Red sticks out. I'm trying to blend, Barton.”

 

“And as the person covering your ass from a rooftop, I can tell you, blend-y is no bueno.”

 

“I really can't do anything about it right now, Clint,” despite herself, she smiled. The hardest part of working with Barton was not laughing at the constant chatter in her ear.

 

It was a beautiful evening. The garden terrace was a perfect place for the swanky soiree full of dignitaries, criminal masterminds and the idle rich. Somewhere, on a rooftop, Clint was watching her, keeping her safe. And nearby, a SHIELD strike team was ready to be deployed. It had been an adjustment, going from the Red Room, to being freelance, to being part of a team. A team that was doing good. Helping the world. Natasha felt as close to happy as she had ever felt in her entire life.

 

“Heads up Nat, target is approaching.”

 

It was easy. Flirt a bit. Reach out and touch his hand. Put the tracker on his very expensive watch.

 

“Strike team is receiving data. We'll pick up the bastard as soon as he leaves the party. Rendez-vous at extraction point.” This time it was Coulson's voice in her ear. “Good work, Romanoff.”

 

“Thank you, sir. Easy as...”

 

Now

 

Even in the dim light, she could still make out the tiniest bit of green in Steve's eyes as he lay facing her, listening to her story.

 

“That's when I saw her; Madame B.”

 

“Your handler in the Red Room?”

 

“I had to stop her, Steve. Somehow. I couldn't let her do to other girls what she had done to me.”

 

Steve's hand came over to brush Natasha's hair behind her ear. It was a familiar gesture.

 

“Did you go rogue?”

 

“Nope. You'd have been proud. I took the intel to Coulson. He agreed to the op. Clint and I tracked her. Followed her to the new Red Room. But the op took several weeks. And what I didn't know was that Madame B had made me, just as quickly as I had made her. And she called in a favor to Hydra.”

 

“She sent the Winter Soldier after you,” he said knowingly.

 

“Yeah. He caught up to us in Kiev, a month after he was dispatched to eliminate me. The team managed to detain Madame B and extracted 7 of the girls. But the Winter Soldier was waiting. Clint pushed me out of the path of a bullet and was hit. The bullet broke his radius and ulna. No one else was hurt. But in the chaos, Clint and I got separated from the other SHIELD agents. We had two girls with us. They couldn't have been more than five years old.”

 

Then

 

“You're safe now,” Natasha reassured the two little girls that she had rescued from Madame B as they huddled in an alley, waiting for extraction. In English, she asked her partner, “How's the arm, Clint?”

 

“I'll be all right. Won't be able to use the bow for a while.” He turned his arm over and back again, regarding the injury and the makeshift field dressing.

 

“You've got that look, Clint.”

 

“What look?”

 

“The 'I'm thinking of saying something stupid, look'.”

 

Barton sighed, “It was a bad shot.”

 

“What?”

 

“Any marksman worth his salt should have been able to make that shot, Nat. I know you think it's the Boogeyman...”

 

“The Winter Soldier.”

 

“But either the guy after you is incompetent or he was intentionally trying to NOT make you dead.”

 

Coulson's voice came over the ear piece. “Extraction unit is across the street. Sending agents to you now.”

 

Natasha answered, “We have two children with us, and Barton is injured.”

 

“Roger that.”

 

Extraction went perfectly. Until the girl that Clint was holding dropped her toy and let out a little wail. Natasha bent to retrieve the dropped teddy bear as Clint took the two girls to safety.

 

She felt the Winter Soldier's presence before she heard his voice. “I was sent to eliminate you.”

 

“Then why don't you?” She replied, turning around to face him.

 

“I don't know. Your hair... it should be red...don't...” He narrowed his eyes and gestured, “Go.”

 

Now

 

Nose to nose with Steve, sharing the same bed and the same air, Nat finished the story.

 

“Clint thought, that maybe the length of the op was the reason he went off script. Like his programming got more and more fragile the longer he was out.”

 

“Are you sure he said 'don't' and not 'dot'?”

 

“I'm...no... I'm not sure but that doesn't make any sense.”

 

“Yes, it does. Just before the war, we went to Coney Island. He won a teddy bear for a pretty redhead named Dot. If you were standing there, holding that bear...”

 

Natasha let a tear slip down her cheek, “He was remembering?”

 

“Why didn't you tell me about this?” There was no judgment in his voice, but his eyebrows were knitted together in the way they always did when he was disappointed.

 

“It was over a decade ago, Steve.”

 

“But after you knew who the Winter Soldier was? Who he was to me?”

 

“What did you want me to tell you, Steve? That ten years ago Bucky's moral code might have been intact under all of Hydra's conditioning? They had more than ten years since then to continue to erase every bit of him. I didn't want to get your hopes up.”

 

“And now, he's gone again.”

 

“We're going to get them back, Steve. All of them.”

 

“We will.” He pulled her into his arms, moving her head from her pillow and onto his chest. “We have a lot of work to do.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
